The Man Keeping the Martial Down

[Florian]

Permanent costs that you can't ever make up for are a bad mechanic.

Sure, it is a cool story if the caster sacrifices something important to achieve a goal. But then the session is over but the penalty sticks as long as he is played. That is not particularly fun. It also leeds to casters who don't use those powerful abilities only rarely, it leads to casters who don't use those powerful abilities at all or who don't even bother with learning them in the first place.
As long as you can retreat to fight another day, there is no real need for such sacrifices. There would be also resentment if the caster is asked o make sacrifices again and again to get the plot done while the other party members just level up and grow more powerful.

That 3.x changed all sacrifices to xp or money was a good thing. Those things are fine because you could re-earn them. It is just a pity that the economy was a broken mess and what is a cost at level x is no longer a cost at level x+5 and that running with different xp is a hassle by raw.

Risk vs. reward, really.

ShadowRun has the drain mechanic, that makes casting high-powered spells a risk, but you can also recover from it without having long-term consequences.

L5R 4th makes casting a spell a skill check, failure means you've wasted a spell point. The clue here lies in spells being a bit modular, so you can decide how powerful the effect could be, but the task difficulty of casting that spell successfully scales along with it.

Another option are occult rituals from Pathfinder. High magic for "muggles", but with manageable failure and mishap results.

Ar Magicka might be the system with the highest non-cheese power ceiling on magic, but you must work to do it. Either you spent your time on research, or you go out to grab some Vis. Mutually exclusive activities.

[Satinavian]

Risk vs. reward, really.

I talked specifically about permanent cost. Which is what the old spells were about. Life years when there was no rejuvenation. Attribute points lost forever. Stuff like that.

But what can justify a permanent cost ? When it comes down to it, only a permanent reward. Which is in general not what spells tend to provide.


Drain in Shadowrun works because you can heal it. If casting spells had an Essence cost attached instead, it would stop working.

[Florian]

But what can justify a permanent cost ? When it comes down to it, only a permanent reward. Which is in general not what spells tend to provide.

The permanent reward is gaining more XP and leveling up, gaining more access to other stuff, like higher level spells.

Yeah, I know that is totally trite, but such was the game initially set up.

[Frozen_Feet]

Permanent losses are not a game design issue at all. Characters are not meant to be played forever. If a character drops below point of usability, you retire them and shift to playing another.

---

The fact that you can create tiers observationally is a sign that the system is significantly out of balance.

More the point, most systems, d20 D&D in particular, have internal metrics of power, such as Effective Character Level, Challenge Rating etc.

If you want there to be imbalance between different characters, you simply have them be of different level. Boom, done.

Tiers are redundant if internal metrics of a game system work. Necessity of tiers means those internal metrics don't measure what they're meant to.

[Satinavian]

And it was a bad idea. One of many bad ideas of the early D&D versions.

To bury it with 3.x was a good move. As i said, the xp and gold costs that were meant to replace them were a better way because you could continue to earn xp and gold.

[Morty]

You can play mutants and masterminds where you can pick how polyvalent the players are(chose the cap in size of arrays and the number of power point per pl) and how powerful they are(chose the pl)
You can totally do dnd in mutants and masterminds.

Many systems embrace variable power levels in one way or the other, yes. That D&D doesn't probably boils down to tradition and familiarity.

I agree that from what I can see magic has become cheaper without becoming weaker over D&D editions. Mostly I just wanted to post this relevant quote I got from Vizzerdix's signature.

Early D&D had restrictions on magic that made playing a magic-user annoying. 3E was technically right to remove or lessen them, but it didn't compensate for the increase in power it brought.

[Max_Killjoy]

One of our fellow posters (and I feel bad for forgetting who every time, I *think* it was Grod, and I'm also paraphrasing a lot here) has noted that making an ability a pain in the rear is a horrible way to balance.

[Quertus]

On Playing Fighters: I thought that might speak to you. As for what your not seeing: I think you have seen it you just didn't recognize it for what it is. After all, we are talking about problems that make fighters unfun to play, so if you aren't having fun playing fighters maybe you have already found them. (We could go into more detail if you want to be sure.)

To be fair, there is a difference between not liking fighters because they aren't designed well and not liking them for their basic aesthetic design. When you dislike both, it could be understandably hard to disentangle them.

Or, like me, you could exclusively dislike their "aesthetic design". Yes, even if you're talking about an RPG other than D&D.

So, what do you think I haven't seen?

[Quertus]

If you're using competitive games as an analogue, you've already missed the entire point. Sure, in golf a handicap is OK. But D&D is not a competitive game, so handicaps just breed resentment from both sides. The one who is hobbled doesn't get to play his full character and has to constantly worry about breaking things; the ones who "benefit" see their friend struggling not to break the game and wonder why that character is even adventuring with them in the first place when he could race on ahead and solve the problems himself.

Instead reduce the salience of the difference. Bring the floor and ceiling closer together and make sure the default settings (the "what looks good" options) are robust and simple. Tune the system so that you don't need optimized characters, so that the window of viability is really wide and flat. Above all, eliminate trap options. A group of people without system mastery should be able to make characters that can handle any 1PP adventure path with tolerable inter-character balance simply by following the basic archetypes presented, no matter which class options they choose. Being the runaway star is not fun for most people; neither is falling desperately and insuperably behind because you didn't know that your entire class/play-style was a trap option (looking at you 3e monks, where the stock advice for playing that style is "go unarmed sword-sage instead").

It's not a competition, it's a play. It's a cinematic, and how strong you are determines your screen time. Just because everyone is on the same team, working together, doesn't mean that how important one person is vs. another isn't a big deal.

It's basic child psychology. Your average child (rightly) views a new sibling as a threat - as a competitor for food & attention.

Everyone else at the table is someone else who is competing for the spotlight. You can be a ****, and try to steal as much of the spotlight as you can (we all know these players). Or, you can embrace teamwork, and they can be someone else with whom you share the spotlight. Or, you can be a ****, and try to force the spotlight on people who don't want it, or whom it is inappropriate to give the spotlight at this juncture (we may or may not all know these players).

If you disagree with this assessment, by all means, provide a cogent disagreement beyond "you're wrong", coupled, if possible, with a more accurate model for the underlying psychology of spotlight distribution.

IMO, when you have a player who doesn't get "teamwork", the easiest solution is that you nerf the **** out of them, disabling their ability to participate in various minigames until their spotlight time is equivalent to that of the other players at the table. Then, they hopefully learn the importance of the "participation" ribbon that they were denying everyone else by never getting it.

I'd say that the easy solution is to talk to them, but, honestly, humans are rather dull creatures, IME, and unlikely to learn by being told that they're being a **** - they usually need to be *shown*. Thus my preferred solution of completely obviating their character, then asking if they'd care to tone it back to match the rest of the party.

[Max_Killjoy]

It's basic child psychology. Your average child (rightly) views a new sibling as a threat - as a competitor for food & attention.

First, I haven't gamed with children young enough for that to matter since I was that young, so it really has nothing to do with any gaming I do.

Second... "rightly"? Um, OK.

[Quertus]

@ Quertus:
I dont recall your tricks for getting out of a force cage, did it involve wasting a lot of gold and item slots on buying cloaks of the montebank and rods of negation? Or begging your allies to waste their turn teleporting you out?

[*]"I believe I gave a whole list of solutions to Force Cage;" I haven't seen that list, do you still have it?

Its been a decade or so since I last played high level 3.X, but other than the Cape of the Mountebank (which takes up the cloak slot, meaning that the character loses out on the cloak of resistance, which is absolutely necessary for facing a caster) what other tactical teleportation is available to a fighter?

1) Adding Resistance to a Cape of the M~ costs the same as buying an equal power Cloak of Resistance. No loss there.

2) I play wizards. Tactical Teleport (or any other aspect of playing a Fighter, for that matter) isn't really my thing.

3) that having been said... off hand...

Ring of Spell Storing

Ioun Stone of Spell Storing (Ioun socket optional)

UMD + Scroll of Dimension Door (cheaper than the cost of the material components of Force Cage)

Level dip in Cloistered Cleric + Travel Domain + ... (you know the rest)

Level dip or feats for Tome of Battle maneuvers

Anklet of Translocation - although this is the go to item for tactical teleportation, turns out it requires line of effect. So, a quick Google search says...

Shadow Cloak

Boots of Big Stepping

That was my off-the-cuff quick list of solutions. Doubtless, someone who put any effort into it could come up with many more. Like Contingency, or counterspells (even if using UMD), let alone the mundane solutions I offered in another post, like stealth, or flooding the field with people in disguises, or blocking LoS with smoke / etc.

Also, Contingency doesn't involve your allies "wasting their turn" - it provides free action economy.

[Telok]

One of our fellow posters (and I feel bad for forgetting who every time, I *think* it was Grod, and I'm also paraphrasing a lot here) has noted that making an ability a pain in the rear is a horrible way to balance.

The issue there is that we have a subset of the population which feels that any restrictions are an annoyance. Even those restrictions that are designed as balancing factors.

Take the Warhammer casting paradigm for example. It's essentially a "skill" check with the possibility of bad wild magic style side effects, with greater danger for higher power magic and a limited number of ways to mitigate the danger. Lots of people consider that an annoyance, but really that risk the main check on magic power in the system. And it pretty well works. The Warhammer systems don't have the D&D style super-wizard issue. Remove that 'annoying' limit and there's no longer a mechanical reason not to play a caster in the system.

That's what has been done to D&D over the years. Casting gets safer and easier, but without a significant reduction in spell power. So now there's this issue with it.

[Quertus]

[*]"I haven't seen many challenges that a 3e "Fighter" simply cannot solve." Other people have (flying enemies has been mentioned,

Ranged weapons, flying mounts, magical items that grant flight, sneaking past them, poisoning them in their sleep, booby-trapping their landing zone...

a door too strong to break down).

No such thing. But, if there were, break down the walls, pick the lock, go around, kill everyone inside with smoke/water/lava/cave-in, get a man on the inside, battering rams, items of teleportation, or just try knocking...

My personal worst experience was trying to interrogate a prisoner that we couldn't ungag because they were a spell caster and they knew teleport.

You glue a pen.. a stick to his head, and force him to use it to write in the dirt.

[Quertus]

This has come up before, combined with the idea of class "tiers"... that different classes supposedly exist to present different challenge levels or handicaps... it's an approach that I take a VERY VERY dim view of, for several reasons, not least of which is, as you say, that RPGs are not a competition sport.

As PhoenixPhyre said, that's a descriptive use, when you're trying to analyze a system and deal with its faults.

My real gripe is that a few posters have, in the past, enthusiastically treated tiers as prescriptive, that rather than being an analytical sign that a system has a major problem, they're something that supposedly should be designed into a system, so that you can intentionally put the best player in the "worst" class to "handicap" them and "balance" the players in the group.

And to be blunt, that approach is rubbish, for so many reasons, starting with:
* it treats RPGs as a competition between the players
* it claims to tell the players what sort of class they "should" be playing depending on their "mastery" of the system, and treats "mastery" of the system as the most important thing a player can bring to the table (as opposed to roleplaying ability, good will, cooperative approach, patience, etc, etc, etc, in no particular order)
* it treats bad game design as a goal rather than a pitfall

I get it.

"It's not imbalance if it's intentional!" is a bad motto. That's what you're saying.

On this site, or elsewhere?
I ask because, well, yes. Yes there are more than a few people on a site dedicated to a D&D 3e webcomic that are rather invested in the 3e system. And 3e was rather predicated on the idea that system mastery was both 1) a way to paper over design errors (the part that is focused on a lot nowadays), and 2) a reward for invested gamers, and thus a selling point to them (which had worked for WotC's other signature product, MtG). Overall, given A) how many people still really enjoy 3e/PF and work hard to make it usable despite much of that papered-over design errors being real problems, a B) how much griping people have about that setup, I'd say it was a mixed success or mixed failure.

Still, overall, you are 100% right. Leaning into the problematic components of the game is facilitating the problems at the expense of other foci, as well as making them a goal onto themselves.

Both here and elsewhere.

It's not that knowing the system is ever a bad thing. It's the attitude that system mastery is a competition between players, and that the system should be designed around either offsetting or rewarding differences in system mastery, that irks me.

I feel like D&D could actually benefit a lot from variable and adjustable power levels... if they were intentional and explicitly named as such, instead of mostly happening due to poor design and tradition. And if you could play different kinds of characters on different "tiers", instead of being higher up the more magic you have. In fact, it's pretty much the only way I can think of to reconcile the completely contradictory expectations people have.

Hi. I am guessing, Max, that this is a (mis)statement of my PoV?

Well, "tiers" are horrible. Let's ignore that.

But inherent power difference between classes (yes, where "versatility" counts under "power" for these purposes. As a certain lich said, "power is power")? That is a good thing, for many reasons.

The most easily understood, and least controversial, IME, is that some people enjoy the optimization minigame. The problem is, if every base chassis were equal, then the optimizers would be OP compared to the "beer and pretzles" "can we just play already?" crowd.

The easiest solution, afaict, is to have clearly labeled "some assembly required" classes for the optimizers to get their optimizer-fun out of optimizing, to produce characters that are balanced to the table.

Balance to the table.

Yes, I believe that there are plenty of other factors that need to be balanced, like the spotlight hog vs the wallflowers, or the plot-guy vs the war gamers, or whatever, where mechanical differences are advantageous. And, yes, I include any form of "player skill", be it tactical, or riddle-master, or whatever, in that calculation of spotlight time.

[Talakeal]

That was my off-the-cuff quick list of solutions. Doubtless, someone who put any effort into it could come up with many more. Like Contingency, or counterspells (even if using UMD), let alone the mundane solutions I offered in another post, like stealth, or flooding the field with people in disguises, or blocking LoS with smoke / etc.

Also, Contingency doesn't involve your allies "wasting their turn" - it provides free action economy.

Do note that none of those options work for a core fighter, except maybe the ring of spell storing which is a ring slot, a ton of gold, and requires the pity of a friendly wizard for a one use item.

None of those mundane solutions are really feasible for standing operating procedure.

[Quertus]

Second... "rightly"? Um, OK.

(Thanos' voice) It's simple calculus. A parent's time is finite; their attention, finite. Parents only have so much time to give their children. An Xth child will eat into the time of the first X-1 children.

Further, younger children have greater needs, and so will both consume proportionally larger amounts of their patients' time. Also, psychology being what it is, it will usually appear even worse to the child than it actually is.

Also, if this behavior weren't needed, I'd like to think we would have evolved past it.

First, I haven't gamed with children young enough for that to matter since I was that young, so it really has nothing to do with any gaming I do.

A DM's time, and spotlight time in a game session, are also limited. By the same simple calculus, one can easily see why adding 20 more people to a game should seem unappealing to most gamers.

I think it's disingenuous to say that this logic has nothing to do with any gaming you do.

[Quertus]

Do note that none of those options work for a core fighter, except maybe the ring of spell storing which is a ring slot, a ton of gold, and requires the pity of a friendly wizard for a one use item.

None of those mundane solutions are really feasible for standing operating procedure.

Um...

I'm pretty sure (but AFB, so not completely sure) that *many* of those solutions could have been implemented, even by the ridiculously, hilariously horrible core-only Fighter.

1) Adding Resistance to a Cape of the M~ costs the same as buying an equal power Cloak of Resistance. No loss there.

Ring of Spell Storing

Ioun Stone of Spell Storing (Ioun socket optional)

UMD + Scroll of Dimension Door (cheaper than the cost of the material components of Force Cage)

Like Contingency

or counterspells (even if using UMD)

let alone the mundane solutions I offered in another post, like stealth

or flooding the field with people in disguises

or blocking LoS with smoke / etc.

By my count, that's 9 options, available even in core-only. OK, the "smoke" one (at least, the way I would prefer to implement it) probably isn't trivial in core. Still, 8 options. 8 > 0.

As to feasible... well, in an optimized party, a Ring of Spell Storing (or equivalent) should be Standard Operating Procedure for passing along "self-only" buffs.

And, given the sheer number of times you got put in a Force Cage (didn't you say you spent over half your time trapped inside Force Cages?), it sounds like any one of those as SoP would be better than "I'm in time out" as SoP...

[Quertus]

Double-digit players? What kind of games were these? Table-top RPGs are not, outside of very specialized tournament modules, designed for play by double-digit groups. Any experience or observation based on play is such a massively oversized group cannot be used to generalize to typical play experience.

[*]"That certainly hasn't been my experience." Your experience seems to be an outlier. If we could package how you solved or did not encounter gameplay problems and send them around that would be great. But I don't know how to do that. If you could describe it maybe we could learn from it. Or maybe it would even be less fun for the average D&D player for other reasons. Did anyone ever play an optimized wizard at your table?

So, a rambling tangent... we'll see if anyone can unearth any gems.

Primarily, these were open table 2e games. Some of these games were also "everyone is allowed up to 3 characters simultaneously". So it had a strong war-game vibe.

But, contrary to what I expect most people would expect given that, it also was a good place to appreciate people's roleplaying.

It is often difficult to tell the difference, personality-wise, between the player and their character. But there are 3 tools I have seen that really make a difference. Two of them were utilized by some of these huge-table groups.

One was simply people playing multiple characters. The second was 1-shots. In either of these scenarios, you quickly see how different characters are different (yes, and how they are the same). Point is, you quickly get a feel for both the player (what is the same about all the characters), and their roleplaying (how their characters aren't just them) when you see them play multiple characters in a short(ish) span of time. Let me sit at a table with someone for a year, and I can tell you less about their roleplaying than I can sitting in for 3 1-shots where someone plays 3 different characters.

So, while it wasn't tops, it was still one of the better setups for appreciating other people's roleplaying that I've experienced.

One of these tables also is the one where the party loved getting a new spotlight hog player. They would look forward to me switching characters, and totally obviating their character. I would "teach" them what it felt like to be made useless, and ask them if they'd care to tone it back to the level of the party. So many players just didn't get that it wasn't about grabbing as much of the spotlight as they could - that "teamwork' was a thing.

So, could I have fielded a legal playing piece that, between its mechanical power and my superior tactics, could have solo'd every encounter? Yes, easily. But what fun would that be? Could other players there have done so, too? ... Maybe? Several could have come close, at least - unlike me, they never really pulled out the big guns the way I did. They had no interest in doing so.

Instead, everyone ran what they found fun. Everyone built their own minigame. One player collected obscene amounts of random junk, then utilized it in later encounters in ways that, honestly, I never could have paralleled. One player played the "high school romance" minigame. One player played the "political / try to get ahead" minigame. One player played the "merchant / make money" minigame. Whatever. I honestly couldn't understand or duplicate the half of what they did. And, one or two players, they asked such odd questions that I never understood what minigame they were playing, but, whatever it was, they were having fun with it.

Everyone could nominally participate in the combat minigame. I say "nominally", because, well, some of my characters would just "run and hide", or some characters were glorified boxes of band-aids, while characters had a range of contribution. But, outside the first session of the "untaught jerk", or my character in their second session if they just didn't get it, nobody really completely dominated combat. And, usually, nobody completely dominated any other niche that had multiple participants and/or nobody was hitting any other activity from similar enough angles to be competing with or upset by the activities of others.

I guess I'll end my ramble there for now, and see if y'all can make heads or tails of it.

[Talakeal]

Um...

I'm pretty sure (but AFB, so not completely sure) that *many* of those solutions could have been implemented, even by the ridiculously, hilariously horrible core-only Fighter.

1) Adding Resistance to a Cape of the M~ costs the same as buying an equal power Cloak of Resistance. No loss there.

Ring of Spell Storing

Ioun Stone of Spell Storing (Ioun socket optional)

UMD + Scroll of Dimension Door (cheaper than the cost of the material components of Force Cage)

Like Contingency

or counterspells (even if using UMD)

let alone the mundane solutions I offered in another post, like stealth

or flooding the field with people in disguises

or blocking LoS with smoke / etc.

By my count, that's 9 options, available even in core-only. OK, the "smoke" one (at least, the way I would prefer to implement it) probably isn't trivial in core. Still, 8 options. 8 > 0.

As to feasible... well, in an optimized party, a Ring of Spell Storing (or equivalent) should be Standard Operating Procedure for passing along "self-only" buffs.

And, given the sheer number of times you got put in a Force Cage (didn't you say you spent over half your time trapped inside Force Cages?), it sounds like any one of those as SoP would be better than "I'm in time out" as SoP...

A fighter is not going to be able to pull off using a scroll of dimension door, and wands are only slightly more doable. UMD is a charisma based cross class skill.

Likewise I am fairly certain a fighter cannot have a contingency.

Custom magic items are a possibility, if your DM allows it. In my experiance most don't.

I never had a force cage cast on me, I have never been a player in a game past level 8 or so, it is my players who seem like they spend half their time in force cages once we get to high levels.

I would still love to hear how this flooding the field with duolicates idea works, that sounds hilarious in a Wile E Coyote sort of way.

[Quertus]

Lkewise I am fairly certain a fighter cannot have a contingency.

Custom magic items are a possibility, if your DM allows it. In my experiance most don't.

I would still love to hear how this flooding the field with duolicates idea works, that sounds hilarious in a Wile E Coyote sort of way.

Ring of Spell Storing or UMD a scroll are core ways to gain a Contingency.

RAW has rules for merging items; if your GM is ignoring those under the broader heading of (I agree, highly questionable) "custom" items, that's on them.

Hire 20 Hobos to make disguise checks to look like you. Wizard's aren't known for good Spot checks - especially given range penalties - to tell the difference to know which one to Force Cage before you're on top of them, chopping their head off.

[Quertus]

Double-digit players? What kind of games were these? Table-top RPGs are not, outside of very specialized tournament modules, designed for play by double-digit groups. Any experience or observation based on play is such a massively oversized group cannot be used to generalize to typical play experience.

Well, unlike in the bit you quoted, I usually describe it as my preference, implying that I've played more "normal" games. So, I agree, one cannot generalized typical play from atypical play. One can, however, comment on differences between typical and atypically, and how atypical play can be (subjectively or even objectively) better.

But this isn't that.

This is me commenting that, even in an edge case where this should be most problematic, I rarely found it to be a problem.

This was me being thankful that my many groups were somehow better suited to not having that problem than the typical D&D group.

[Kyutaru]

One of our fellow posters (and I feel bad for forgetting who every time, I *think* it was Grod, and I'm also paraphrasing a lot here) has noted that making an ability a pain in the rear is a horrible way to balance.

Permitting them to use the same broken levels of reality-shaping magic every 8 hours is similarly a horrible way to balance things. It's also the method the developers chose in their infinite wisdom. We have to first solve that problem to get at the discrepancy issues.

Casting a spell that destroys the world is fine and all. Casting it every long rest on a new planet is pushing it. This isn't Dragonball Z and even Freiza isn't that productive. Permanent costs were a means of discouraging casters from making regular use of abilities that were intentionally strong. If we remove those permanent costs as 3.X did then we should remove the abilities associated with them.

That means banning Haste, Resurrection, Wish, etc.

[Talakeal]

Ring of Spell Storing or UMD a scroll are core ways to gain a Contingency.

RAW has rules for merging items; if your GM is ignoring those under the broader heading of (I agree, highly questionable) "custom" items, that's on them.

Hire 20 Hobos to make disguise checks to look like you. Wizard's aren't known for good Spot checks - especially given range penalties - to tell the difference to know which one to Force Cage before you're on top of them, chopping their head off.

Pulling off the UMD check for a contengent scroll is really tough, and by RAW I am not sure if scrolls can be made contingent.

Does RAW have rules for merging items? It has been many years, but I seem to recall being frustrated by their absense.

A ring of major spell storing is a 200,000 gp magic item, irrc the highest value of any item pre-epic. Assuming the party will have access to one is a bit of a stretch imo.

How do you actually get the hobos into the dungeon though? And how do you stave off the alignment infraction when they die to the first AOE? And again, its been several years, but wont the mage likely have some form of true seeing or be able to distinguish who is a PC and who isnt by the lack of magic items?

[Quertus]

Pulling off the UMD check for a contengent scroll is really tough, and by RAW I am not sure if scrolls can be made contingent.

Does RAW have rules for merging items? It has been many years, but I seem to recall being frustrated by their absense.

A ring of major spell storing is a 200,000 gp magic item, irrc the highest value of any item pre-epic. Assuming the party will have access to one is a bit of a stretch imo.

How do you actually get the hobos into the dungeon though? And how do you stave off the alignment infraction when they die to the first AOE? And again, its been several years, but wont the mage likely have some form of true seeing or be able to distinguish who is a PC and who isnt by the lack of magic items?

Scroll of Contingency, just like Scroll of Fireball.

Yes, RAW does have rules for merging items. AFB, IIRC, price defaults to x1.5 for cheaper enchantments. MIC added RAW that said that "generic" enchantments (+x to Y, usually) are always x1 price / don't count as the "main" enchantment.

I don't think I've ever had to put level 7-9 "self-only" spells on anyone else. Most are in the 1-3 range, but Divine Power, at 4th, would get you to Contingency range.

Dungeon? Prepared Wizard? That doesn't sound right. Alignment infraction? Definitely not my cup tea.

Yes, Quertus, my signature academia mage, for whom this account is named, could tell the difference. Most Wizards couldn't, IME.

[Talakeal]

Scroll of Contingency, just like Scroll of Fireball.

Yes, RAW does have rules for merging items. AFB, IIRC, price defaults to x1.5 for cheaper enchantments. MIC added RAW that said that "generic" enchantments (+x to Y, usually) are always x1 price / don't count as the "main" enchantment.

I don't think I've ever had to put level 7-9 "self-only" spells on anyone else. Most are in the 1-3 range, but Divine Power, at 4th, would get you to Contingency range.

Dungeon? Prepared Wizard? That doesn't sound right. Alignment infraction? Definitely not my cup tea.

Yes, Quertus, my signature academia mage, for whom this account is named, could tell the difference. Most Wizards couldn't, IME.

Right, a scroll of contingency can exist, but I am not sure if a scroll meets the requirements to be made contingent.

Only the greater ring of spell storing can contain the contingency spell as the normal version caps out at level 5.

[Quertus]

Only the greater ring of spell storing can contain the contingency spell as the normal version caps out at level 5.

Huh. Must have been a 3.0->3.5 change I missed.

[Morty]

One of our fellow posters (and I feel bad for forgetting who every time, I *think* it was Grod, and I'm also paraphrasing a lot here) has noted that making an ability a pain in the rear is a horrible way to balance.

It was indeed Grod, and I subscribe to this sentiment heartily.

Hi. I am guessing, Max, that this is a (mis)statement of my PoV?

Well, "tiers" are horrible. Let's ignore that.

But inherent power difference between classes (yes, where "versatility" counts under "power" for these purposes. As a certain lich said, "power is power")? That is a good thing, for many reasons.

The most easily understood, and least controversial, IME, is that some people enjoy the optimization minigame. The problem is, if every base chassis were equal, then the optimizers would be OP compared to the "beer and pretzles" "can we just play already?" crowd.

The easiest solution, afaict, is to have clearly labeled "some assembly required" classes for the optimizers to get their optimizer-fun out of optimizing, to produce characters that are balanced to the table.

Balance to the table.

Yes, I believe that there are plenty of other factors that need to be balanced, like the spotlight hog vs the wallflowers, or the plot-guy vs the war gamers, or whatever, where mechanical differences are advantageous. And, yes, I include any form of "player skill", be it tactical, or riddle-master, or whatever, in that calculation of spotlight time.

Or we could let players and GMs adjust power and complexity levels regardless of what class or power source they're using. Also known as using a method that works as opposed to one that... isn't even a method, because it happened by accident.

Permitting them to use the same broken levels of reality-shaping magic every 8 hours is similarly a horrible way to balance things. It's also the method the developers chose in their infinite wisdom. We have to first solve that problem to get at the discrepancy issues.

Casting a spell that destroys the world is fine and all. Casting it every long rest on a new planet is pushing it. This isn't Dragonball Z and even Freiza isn't that productive. Permanent costs were a means of discouraging casters from making regular use of abilities that were intentionally strong. If we remove those permanent costs as 3.X did then we should remove the abilities associated with them.

That means banning Haste, Resurrection, Wish, etc.

No one is denying that it's a problem that needs fixing. Old-school D&D's way of doing it it was just barely better than doing nothing at all.

[PhoenixPhyre]

No one is denying that it's a problem that needs fixing. Old-school D&D's way of doing it it was just barely better than doing nothing at all.

And sometimes much worse.

[Cluedrew]

Grod's Law: You cannot and should not balance bad mechanics by making them annoying to use.

There are definitely meaningful limits that are not adding annoyance that can be used. But annoyance is not a balancing factor.

To Quertus: First off your reply to me kind of got scattered so I am just going to pick out a couple of high level points. The first small one is I would still love it if you could think of a problem a fighter can solve that a wizard can't.

The second larger issue is about 80% of the solutions you have proposed for fighters solving problems, I'm going to throw them out. You are still thinking like a wizard, you have effectively answered "how would a wizard trapped in the class of a fighter solve these problems". I want to know how would a fighter (in a fighter class) solve these problems. I should of said this from the start but I forgot that you are Quertus who beget Quertus. I accept full responsibility.

The question is more than "what can you do with the fighter class" as it should also be in keeping with the archetype. So the flying mount, I give that a pass. A knight is close enough to a fighter and knights ride horses so a fantasy fighter could ride a pegasus.* I give it a pass not with flying colours but it works.

Use Magic Device on the other hand is rejected. Its not as ridiculous as saying here is how my level 20 fighter can solve problems when it is actually an 11th level fighter and a 9th level wizard. But in my mind it is the same problem. You are not actually using the fighter's skill set but an orthogonal tool that just happens to be accessible. A fighter that does use UMD in combination with their standard skills is a legitimate character concept but A) I believe that falls outside the standard fighter archetype and B) you're not even downing that most of the time, the fighter part is just left behind.

So now I am going to try to define what the difference is. This may take a couple of tries so I apologize for any shifting goal posts, I will try not to knee-jerk reaction restrict things excessively.

So let's start with magic as that is the big issue here and with your solutions in my mind. Using magic to solve the problem is right out. Using magic to increase the fighter's ability to solve the problem is allowed. So using a scroll of knock to open a door is not allowed, using a scroll of toughening so the fighter can just punch the door down is fine. As long as a normal person's hands would still be ineffective.

Which leads into the next one. Any solution anyone could do - but the wizard usually wouldn't bother to do it that way - is going to receive half marks at best. There actually probably should be some of these, and some fighter-like solutions that are still not as good as the wizard's way. But there should be a similar number of situations that work the other way and the wizard has to turn to the commoner's solution.

Indirect solutions are allowed as long as they meet the other restrictions. I would accept the fighter doesn't have to escape the force cage, they take out their bow and arrow and continue the fight standing in the cage if someone showed that was a viable solution. I suspect it is not.

The other issue was learning into other mundane/martial/muggle (How come all of these words start with m?) classes. In the context of analysing the D&D fighter I would not allow that. In the context of the larger thread and the mechanical definitions and so on, I would. I'm going to split the difference and say if you say this is a solution for a rogue or ranger or barbarian then it can. Just don't pass them off as fighter solutions and its fine.

OK that took me a really long time to write, hopefully it all makes sense.

[Max_Killjoy]

That's what I was looking for, thank you.

Grod's Law: You cannot and should not balance bad mechanics by making them annoying to use.

And I'd apply it broadly.

In the context of this thread...

You can't make imbalanced mechanics balanced by making them complex, convoluted, or mentally taxing to use. Players interested in exploiting unbalanced mechanics will endure that, and make the rest of the table endure it. And NO, they have NOT somehow "earned" a "right" to that bad mechanic by putting in extra effort or whatever.

You can't make imbalanced mechanics balanced only via a steep cost. There are always players who will pay that price, and it's never as costly in their minds as you (GM or developer) think it is.

And in both cases, it doesn't matter, the rest of the players don't care about the cost, only about the impact of that bad or imbalanced mechanics on their own enjoyment.